It’s Friday, which means it’s time for Sandra’s fingers to take the spotlight. She wanted to play with one of my precious new indie polishes, and we took it from there. Find out what we used after the break!
Sandra came over last Tuesday and poked through my collection, discovering the lovely KBShimmer – A Raisin to Live in my “to swatch” baskets. Yes, I have baskets waiting for swatching, no judging. They keep me company. I was feeling stingy, and I set her up with a black base coat in Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – Night Fright for opacity, and then did two coats of A Raisin to Live over top. A polish I purchased exclusively for stamping got to come out of the back of the drawer to complete the look, the antacid-like Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – Presto Pink. It stamps much better than the actual pink stamping polish I own, which is nearly transparent. Go figure.
We pulled out the CICI&SISI Jumbo Set 3 stamping plates again, using plate CISI&SISI 16. This image has bold stars and little circles, and since I still can’t find my favorite scraper, I dug out my old Halifax Public Library card (three and a half years sitting in the back of the drawer since I don’t live there anymore), and it worked wonderfully. I have since picked up a few Starbucks cards to use for scraping, since the library card is on the thin side, and I clearly can’t be trusted to keep track of my scrapers.
Due to the black base coat, A Raisin to Live presents darker than it otherwise would. I probably should have used a purple or burgundy. I think the bold stamp and bright pink really livens up the manicure though, taking it from dark and vampy, to something more cheerful.
Sandra really enjoyed how I reversed the stamp for her thumbs so they would be closer to mirroring each other, rather than exact copies. I like how the glitter shows up in this shot, but I swear it didn’t look nearly that streaky in person. Sandra was happy with it though, and that’s really what matters in these manicures.
How do you like them? Have you ever put a base of another colour under something you thought was going to be translucent, and then had it come out a completely different colour than expected? Do you have polishes in your stash that are used for one thing, and one thing only (like Presto Pink here)? Tell me in the comments! I like to know what everyone else is doing.
This mani is not really my cup of tea but it looks good! I feel like non of my ‘regular’ polishes are any good at stamping, maybe I should try some out because I bet I must have some polishes that work for stamping! I do have polishes that I only use for one thing though, some polishes (mostly white, nude ones) I never wear on their own, they always function as a base for nail art. :)
Eva recently posted…Swatch: OPI – Get your number
When I was first starting out with stamping, I took a big sheet of paper, and chose a single stamp and then stamped a bunch of polishes on the paper. I even painted a big black stripe down the side to stamp lighter colours over and see how their coverage was. It was really worth the time since I didn’t know what to look for in a formula to guess whether it would work or not. I actually barely ever use my stamping polishes for stamping since I’ve already got so many good stampers in the regular polish lines. :)
Lesley recently posted…plaid – stamping
At first glance this struck me as similar to some of the first nail strips that came out way back when… but actually taking a moment to see the nails, I really enjoy the different layers that added dimension and interest to the look!
As for layering, I don’t have a knack for it and tend to end up with some wonky results…the other day, for instance, I had some random inspiration to use OPI Ink as a base for mac Formidable. The end result was something similar to my 1st indie polish love: SBL’s The Grackle but without any of the charm. It was unique, sure, but lacked the spark of either polish.
Also, this may be a somewhat stupid question, but how do you reverse a stamp?
Not a stupid question at all, and sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. In this case, I actually just flipped the stamp upside down. Turning it 180 degrees. Painfully simple. The stamp was just symmetric enough to give the illusion of mirroring.
There are two different ways I know of to actually reverse a stamp though. The first is to make a nail polish decal, as shown here, and Nails of Aquarius just posted a great video on decal application right here that I am excited to try out very soon, since my decal application has been horrid.
The other way involved having two stampers, and you pick up the image with one stamper, then press it straight onto the other stamper, and use that second stamper to stamp onto your nail. I haven’t actually done this method, but it seems like it would certainly be less time consuming (you wouldn’t have to wait for decals to dry). I’m probably going to try this one out soon.
Again, sorry about the delay in answering, but I wanted to research it a little to make sure I wasn’t just going to tell you random stuff with nothing to back it up. :)